Business News Roundup, Nov. 2

Chronicle News Services

Published
4:04 pm PDT, Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Uber joins

GM lease plan

Uber is working with General Motors to participate in the automaker’s car-sharing business Maven.

The pilot program will let Uber drivers lease cars from GM’s fleet of cars in San Francisco. The program is somewhat similar to GM’s Express Drive, which allows Lyft drivers to rent out cars from GM on a short-term basis.

GM invested $500 million in Lyft this year, and President Dan Ammann sits on the board. GM’s investment gave it about a 9 percent stake in the San Francisco ride-hailing company, Uber’s largest competitor in the U.S. GM had even held informal discussions about buying Lyft, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg in August.

Uber and Lyft use auto-financing programs to attract and retain drivers. GM will test Maven with Uber over the next 90 days in San Francisco.

Retail

$62 million

Apple Store

It’s going to take a lot of iPhones, Watches and Genius Bar appointments to cover the cost of the new glass-enclosed Apple store being built along the Chicago River on North Michigan Avenue.

A construction permit issued by the city put the price of the project at $62 million.

The 20,000-square-foot store is going up, or more precisely, down, behind a temporary black wall. Plans call for a high-profile but virtually transparent plaza-level entrance leading to the below-ground store overlooking the Chicago Riverwalk.

The Apple store replaces a vacant food court at the site.

Economy

Construction

spending falls

Builders cut their spending in September, the second straight monthly decline. Much of the decrease came as government spending for schools, sewers and transportation projects tumbled.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that total construction spending fell 0.7 percent in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.15 trillion. Publicly funded construction dropped 0.9 percent to an annual rate of $270.3 billion. Over the past 12 months, government construction has slumped 7.8 percent — a decline of nearly $23 billion.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday in Rhode Island Superior Court says the state has already paid the company more than $13 million for a DMV computer system that hasn’t been fully delivered.

Gov. Gina Raimondo says the company is unfairly demanding more money to complete an 8-year-old upgrade and trying to double the price of the project. She cites a 2013 pledge made by CEO Meg Whitman to get the project done.

HP Enterprise, based in Palo Alto, is one of two companies formed last year by the breakup of Hewlett-Packard.